The Canadian violinist Angèle Dubeau and her all-girl ensemble La Pietà are usually heard playing music of Vivaldi and his epoch. They also play post-modern minimalism.
When the day’s hard scratching is done they, like the rest of us, head off to relax with a meal and a movie – which is what their new album is all about. Watch this – A Time for Us.
An Austrian state auditor, Joseph Moser, has described the financial management systems at the Salzburg festivals as being ‘unworthy of an organisation with a one million Euro turnover, let alone 50 million.’
Dr Moser said there was too much cash slushing around in plain envelopes for artist payments. Up to 6.83 million Euros a year, he said, was paid out in cash.
Salzburg festival president Helga Rabl-Stadler dismissed the report as “unfair”, “simply wrong”, “impractical”, “malicious” and “defamatory”. I guess she didn’t agree with its content.
You can read the judge’s full report here (in German).
The federal German academy for youth and music education in Trossingen has come up with a gender-heavyu theme for its next conference. It is titled ‘Young Women in Jazz’ and addresses the under-representation of one half of the German race in a particular music genre. I wonder why.
The first response has come in from those directly affected by the sacking of Benjamin Zander from the New England Conservatory and its Youth Philharmonic Orchestra – supposedly over his engagement of a videographer with a sex crime in his distant past.
The students have weighed the evidence and found it wanting. None of them was exposed to risk of sex abuse. They admired Zander and want him back. The NEC’s president Tony Woodcock refuses to come out from behind the skirts of a crisis management PR firm to answer legitimate questions. The next step may be for his board to step in. This injustice will not go away.
photo: Ben Rabin with conductor Benjamin Zander, Rabin’s mother and father. Zander was suddenly dismissed from his post at NEC on Thursday after over forty years of service. (Courtesy: Gwen Krosnick)
A concertgoer at Symphony Hall, Birmingham, found that excess weight prevented her from enjoying the music. Jacquie Wittstock said she spent much of the time worrying how her bulk affected the people around her. She eventually decided that the only way to go to concerts was to lose weight.
She shed 11 stone (about 70kg) in 16 months, almost half her previous weight.
Weightwatchers is claiming credit for her reduction (and seem to be behind the story). Others might ascribe Jacquie’s transformation to the power of music. Your call.
Details emerging of the deal between City Opera and the musicians union shows that the orchestra all but rolled over and played dead. They have agreed to slash minimum annual earnings per player from $40,000 to $7,000. That suggests City Opera won’t be playing much nextb year – if at all. More here.
Esam Moshi was found guilty of harassing women in Melbourne, Australia.
He used to play weddings and teach arpeggios to Saddam’s brood. His court defence: post-traumatic stress disorder. The judge didn’t buy it and he was sent down for five years. More here.
Just when you thought classical music was trying to go straight, I look at the Carnegie Hall board and this is what I find, fresh off the fashion shows. Almost 1.5 million people have watched this promo vid; they cannot all be wrong.
Meanwhile, over on CBS News, here’s a very good player, Charlie Siem, selling himself as a fashion mannekin.
There is a warning here from history band I offer it free of consultancy fee: Lola, Charley, the last soloist who came off the fashion walk is now married to an agent, a convicted fraudster. Be careful out there.
The campaign to Save Gaby’s Deli in the heart of London’s theatreland is taking a huge stride upmarket. On Jan 30th at 1745 gifted students of the Yehudi Menuhin School will play a classical recital for unsuspecting deli patrons. Yehudi used to eat at the Deli and his signed picture is on the wall.
Among the performers are Gabriel Ng, barely 17 and preparing for the finals of the Menuhin Competition in Beijing this spring, and Louisa Staples who is even younger and already duets with Tasmin Little.
Then on February 8th, stars from the English National Opera perform the food aria (rewritten for the occasion) from Don Giovanni and other pieces. Expect copious libretto references to chickpea balls.
The campaign is to save a traditional, family-owned venue from becoming another Starshit or Zero. See SGD’s Facebook page here.
The funeral of the Lion of Early Music will be at the Westerkerk in Amsterdam on Tuesday the 24th at 3pm (condolences from 1pm).
Unfortunately, this is not the church where Leonhardt prayed and played. That was the French Reformed (Walloon) Church, where he was organist, and also at the Nieuwe Kerk. So why the switch? The Westerkerk has a recently restotred organ – probably louder than the other two, I’m told.
A hysterical column in the Boston Globe stops just short of arguing that Benjamin Zander should be garrotted for hiring a long-rehabilitated sex offender.
It ignores the fact that Zander was fired by president Tony Woodcock long before this employment matter came to light. The case of the videographer withy a murky past was only dug out to justify Zander’s dismissal.
The questions that need to be answered begin with another matter of natural justice – why did the NEC sack a good teacher after 40 years’ service. Was it a case of age discrimination?
We await answers to those questions and neither Woodcock nor his expensive crisis-management flak are doing anything except puffing smoke clouds and praying the scandal will go away. It won’t.
A few days back, I reported on a concerto that was being written in memory of Wallace Hartley, the heroic leader of the Titanic orchestra who went down with the ship.
Now we read of another fine violinist who was drowned on the Costa Concordia. His name was Sandor Feher. He came from Budapest, was 38 years old and he loved nothing better than to teach children how to play an instrument.